1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the creation and maintenance of models of consumers, based upon transactional data extracted from structured information received via electronic channels and viewed by the consumer, and the use of those models to aid in presenting targeted content, such as advertising or special offers, in a way that does not compromise the consumer's privacy.
2. Background
Consumers today receive a tremendous amount of information via electronic systems. Many consumers access the Internet or private networks to review information such as personal bank statements, credit card reports, stock portfolios, online account balances, online transaction receipts, commercial web sites, personal home pages, and the like. Some of this structured information reflects consumer behavior that occurs "off-line" such as credit card transactions made at retail establishments, debit, check or other bank transactions, while some of the structured information represents entirely online behavior (including both commercial and non-commercial behavior). Online behavior also includes behavior that is not directly commercial in nature, such as click-through behavior in using the Internet. This type of behavior is captured in structured documents such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) history files stored on the user's computer.
A key goal of most businesses is to target consumers with products and services that is of interest to the consumer based on their interests, preferences, or demographics. Thus many attempts have been made to determine consumer's interests and provide content (e.g. promotions, advertisements) to products and services that match such interests.
Historically, for many types of their transactions, such as credit or banking transactions, consumers received printed statements from credit card companies, bank, and other financial institutions. The paper statement themselves typically only contain limited information identifying each transaction, its amount, date, and so forth. To enhance the advertising opportunities provided when the consumer is reviewing their printed statement, these institutions often add additional promotional insert documents to the statement, in the hope that the consumer will review these separate documents and be motivated to purchase the advertised products or services. Only limited targeting of the content of the advertising inserts has been possible in the past.
With the rise of consumer use of the Internet, advertisers have sought out ways to target promotional information to consumers viewing web pages and the like. On the World Wide Wcb, "banner" advertising is typically used to promote products or services to consumers viewing various web pages. Many web sites attempt to target banner advertising based on the content of a user's input, typically a search request, or other consumer input that is processed by the web site. However, targeting based on a single consumer input does not necessarily result in banner advertisements that actually are of interest to the consumer. This is because consumers frequently search for or desire information that is not necessarily related to their general interests, preferences, or demographics. Even when consumers are searching for information related to their interests, their online behavior may only reflect a small portion of their interests, and the relative importance of certain interests while online may be vastly different than the importance of the same interest when the consumer is off-line. Thus, online behavior may not be indicative of interests that are likely to lead to transactions being consummated online.
Some web sites attempt to target consumers by storing databases that contain some type of identifying data for each consumer. When a consumer accesses a web site coupled to the database, a targeted advertisement may be selected based on the consumer's data. However, this approach suffers from a loss of privacy to the consumer since personal information about some of their behaviors (typically only their click-throughs at the web site) are recorded, as this information is stored in the database without their consent or control. At present, the owner of the web site is typically free to use this consumer information as they see fit. In addition, the consumer information is often based on very limited information about the consumer that either does not accurately reflect their true interests and preferences or does not change automatically in response to both off-line and online consumer behavior. Furthermore, this information is normally limited to a consumer's prior interaction with that particular web site. While, new services are arising which attempt to share consumer information among unrelated websites, such mechanisms may violate consumer privacy and potentially consumer protection laws in various jurisdictions throughout the world.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system, method, architecture and various software products that can augment structured documents that are received and reviewed online by a consumer using historical behavioral information about the consumer, including either online or off-line behavior, while ensuring the personal privacy of each consumer.